Maslowski, Peter 1944-

views updated

Maslowski, Peter 1944-

PERSONAL:

Born August 28, 1944, in Cincinnati, OH; son of Karl H. (a naturalist) and Edna H. Maslowski; married Linda A. Pernack, September 16, 1968; children: Jeremy Jed, Laurel Leigh. Education: Miami University, Oxford, OH, A.B., 1966; Ohio State University, M.A., 1968, Ph.D., 1972. Hobbies and other interests: Tennis, basketball, fishing, birdwatching.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Lincoln, NE. Office—Department of History, University of Nebraska, Oldfather Hall, Lincoln, NE 68588. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Nebraska, Lincoln, assistant professor, 1974-78, associate professor of U.S. history, 1978—. Executive board member, War in History; member of board of trustees, Society for Military History.

MEMBER:

Organization of American Historians, American Military Institute, Southern Historical Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Teaching award from Amoco Foundation, 1978; College of Arts and Sciences Award for Outstanding Teaching, University of Nebraska, 1986; University-Wide Outstanding Teaching and Instructional Creativity Award, University of Nebraska, 2002.

WRITINGS:

Treason Must Be Made Odious: Military Occupation and Wartime Reconstruction in Nashville, Tennessee, 1862-1865, K.T.O. Press, 1978.

(With Allan R. Millett) For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America, Free Press (New York, NY), 1984, 2nd edition, 1994.

Armed with Cameras: The American Military Photographers of World War II, Free Press (New York, NY), 1993.

Looking for a Hero: Staff Sergeant Joe Ronnie Hooper and the Vietnam War, University of Nebraska Press (Lincoln, NE), 2004.

Contributor to history and military journals. Coeditor (with Mark Grimsley) of the "War, Society, and the Military" series, University of Nebraska Press.

SIDELIGHTS:

Peter Maslowski, a professor of history, has written several books on the topic of U.S. military history and military figures. His first book, Treason Must Be Made Odious: Military Occupation andWartime Reconstruction in Nashville, Tennessee, 1862-1865, focuses on a specific aspect of post-Civil War history, while his second book, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America, is much a broader exploration. Maslowski next returned to a more contained topic with his third book, Armed with Cameras: The American Military Photographers of World War II. The volume seeks to explain how military photography was first used as a tool for intelligence training. Maslowski, whose father was a combat photographer during World War II, wrote the book based on his research of archival material and interviews he conducted over a twenty-year period.

Critical response to Armed with Cameras was predominantly positive. A Publishers Weekly contributor applauded the book's "comprehensive detail," while Bradley Jay Buchner, writing in Armed Forces & Society, called it "a good read." Although Oral History Review contributor Sylvia Danovitch felt that Maslowski's attempts to give life to the personalities of individual military photographers were "less [than] successful," she nevertheless felt that his "ability to convey the magnitude of the photographers' accomplishment is remarkable."

Maslowski next published the biography Looking for a Hero: Staff Sergeant Joe Ronnie Hooper and the Vietnam War. He once told CA: "I have a strong concern for environmental issues. In the past I worked as a professional wildlife photographer and traveled on the ‘Audubon Wildlife Film Series’ circuit, showing and narrating films on Arctic and U.S. wildlife."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Armed Forces & Society, summer, 1996, Bradley Jay Buchner, review of Armed with Cameras: The American Military Photographers of World War II.

Booklist, February 15, 2005, review of Looking for a Hero: Staff Sergeant Joe Ronnie Hooper and the Vietnam War, p. 10566.

Oral History Review, winter, 1996, Sylvia Danovitch, review of Armed with Cameras, p. 116.

Publishers Weekly, September 6, 1993, review of Armed with Cameras, p. 76.